It helps to predict the profit levels and tailoring marketing programs according to the demand, your product development stage, current profits and level of investments and your changing customers’ needs.
The Product Life Cycle (PLC) is one of the Products Portfolio Analysis and Planning Tools.
What are the Product Life Cycle Stages?
There are four different stages of any product from its development stage (prototype) till the product withdrawn from the market and no further demand on it.
The P.L.C. means Product Life Cycle; which is helping you to understand that each product is passing with four developmental stages from the time of launch till the product die; those four stages are:
1. Introduction Stage
In this stage, At this point the product less variety , customers do not know the product , except for a few innovatively customers, but almost no one actually buying the product. Producers in order to expand sales, have invested a lot of promotional costs . Due to limitations of the stage production technology , production volume is small , high manufacturing costs , high advertising costs, low sales, low profit, negative cash flow, few competitors.
In this stage,firm offer a basic product, for maketing test, they would build selective distribution, the market price penetration pricing to build market share rapidly, or high skim pricing to recover development costs, Promotion is aimed at innovators and early adopters. Marketing communications seeks to build product awareness and to educate potential consumers about the product. and usually use heavy sales promotion to entice trail.
3D Televisions: 3D may have been around for a few decades, but only after considerable investment from broadcasters and technology companies are 3D TVs available for the home, providing a good example of a product that is in the Introduction Stage.
Growth Stage
In this early stage, company's sales and profits